Even though influencer marketing is relatively fresh in the marketing industry, it has quickly become one of the most effective tools for brands across all industries.
Singlehandedly capturing the attention and trust of today’s consumers is increasingly more and more difficult for brands across the board. This is precisely why influencer marketing has skyrocketed in popularity as the go-to strategy for brands looking to scale their audience reach, engagement, and ultimately sales.
This has become extremely evident during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers are spending more time than ever online following and engaging with influencers.
Data from 2020 by Matter Communications shed light on how COVID-19 has impacted consumers and their social media usage, perceptions of influencers, and shopping behavior.
The report revealed that 82% of the consumers surveyed have either purchased or considered purchasing a product after seeing influencers or their family and peers post about it. Additionally, 61% are likely to trust recommendations from an influencer or their family and peers, as opposed to only 38% that are likely to trust recommendations from a brand on social platforms.
What this data reveals is that consumers perceive influencer marketing as more authentic as it involves brand promotion by a trusted third party. Therefore, the inherent “non-salesy” nature of this form of marketing drives more sales than traditional marketing techniques and methods.
When you pair this authentic promotional method with methods such as influencer whitelisting and attribution tracking, then you can expect sales to shoot through the roof.
What Is Influencer Whitelisting Anyways?
As the influencer marketing sphere continues to evolve, so do the social media platforms that support them and the creator economy as a whole. A good example of this is influencer whitelisting.
Influencer whitelisting is a marketing process where influencers grant brands advertising permissions to their social media accounts. This process gives brands the opportunity to use the influencer’s handle for their paid Facebook or Instagram ads, effectively securing a new acquisition channel.
Utilizing influencer whitelisting gives brands plenty of benefits, such as complete targeting control over who sees the influencer’s whitelisted posts. A good example of this is the utilization of “dark posts”, which are paid ads that do not show up on the influencer’s feed but instead exclusively to the audience feed the brand is targeting.
This is especially useful for brands that are targeting multiple audience segments. Instagram dark posts, for example, are exponentially growing in popularity among experienced marketers as a way to deliver fascinating, engaging, and authentic content to the precise audiences they want to reach.
What Does Attribution Tracking Have to Do with This?
Attribution tracking is crucial when it comes to influencer marketing and whitelisting because brands need to precisely analyze and calculate the weight and ROI when partnering with influencers. This is especially true when brands utilize multiple influencers in their influencer whitelisting strategy, as they need to effectively compare influencers, their reach, and ultimately their campaign performance to focus on the top-performing influencers and pause or end the campaigns of the under-performers.
Having the ability to track and review the customer’s entire purchase journey is a main component of marketing attribution tracking. When utilizing influencer whitelisting, brands need to be able to effectively compare the effectiveness and efficiency of each of the influencer’s networks that they partner with in their influencer whitelisting program. Influencers with large audiences don’t mean much if those audiences, for example, aren’t very engaging or don’t lead to conversions.
Influencer whitelisting ads have the ability to implement a CTA so the influencer’s referral link can be included within that specific CTA.
The Name of the Game
When executed properly, influencer whitelisting is a win-win for both brands and influencers.
Both parties have immediate and granular access to key performance metrics of the whitelisted ads. Additionally, by successfully utilizing attribution tracking, brands can optimize their influencer whitelisting strategy to scale successful campaigns while creators gain insight into what type of content resonates the best.
The Bottom Line
When this entire process is seamlessly operated, whitelisting then leads to greater respect and trust between brands and influencers. Though, the key here is for brands to run this entire operation without any hiccups and this is where Refersion comes into play.
